Hello, James Kirby.

Here, just a quick note before we begin.

We're taking a short break over the holiday period and we'll be back with the first new episode of The Money Puzzle for the new year on Wednesday, January fourtheenth.

In the meantime, here's high profile stock picker June Beleeu of the ten Cap Group, who has one of the most interesting stories we had during the year.

It's a fascinating interview.

It was recorded in October with Wealth editor Julianne Spragg.

I'm sure you'll enjoy it on behalf of the Money Puzzle team, especially my producer Liah Sammaglu, who's been so good this year.

I'd like to wish you all and merry Christmas and a happy new Year.

Hello and welcome to the Australians Money Puzzle podcast.

I'm James Kirby.

Aboard everybody.

Well.

I've mentioned in recent weeks that we are planning to do some new features here at The Money Puzzle, and today and over the next three Mondays, we're going to present a short series to you on how top investors pick their winning investments.

My colleague at The Australian, Julianne Spragg, sat down for a chat with top stock picker Jun Beilu, the co founder of ten Cap.

She's more than tripled funds under management to more than one point five billion dollars.

How does she pick a good stock and what's your advice for everyday investors?

Let's find out.

Jin Bailou, thanks for joining me.

I want to have a chat to you about your journey.

So you came to Australia as a sixteen year old, got yourself into the funds management business, initially as an analyst involved in a fund that I think had around three hundred million dollars funds under management, then grew that to over a billion dollars and now out on you aren at ten cap.

It's pretty extraordinary store.

Oh thank you.

We want to have a chat about that, but also really keen to learn from you about what you've learned about investing and get some of your tips for those of us who just want to get better at it.

Let's maybe just start at the beginning.

And you came to Australia as a sixteen year old.

What was that like?

Oh, look, it's quite incredible.

Actually, I still remember thinking the first day I landed in Australia.

The first thing that struck me is the sky was so blue.

And I come from China at the time, we don't see blue sky very often.

Sky so blue, and the cloud is so three d, almost as if you could touch it.

It's such a beautiful country.

I just remember thinking that was incredible.

Of course, over the next six month, I think I couldn't understand the word of English, so it took a little while to vaguely translate the body language into what people meant.

We went to read people.

Yeah, you kind of need to read, and it's incredible how our mind adapt them.

So our brain sort of adapt to the situation.

I think within three months I can sort of vaguely understand in the class that what teacher sort of meant.

Subject matter like matt and other things a bit easier, but when you go into biology and others becomes a bit harder.

But still you pick up real quick.

And I still remember every day when I was on my way to school, I have to catch the bus to go to school, and it's about forty minute bus ride and I used to take deep breath.

I get quite stressed and take deep breath, keep forcing myself thinking in English, because the hardest thing for a migrant is that you think in your own language.

Then you before you speak, you translate it, and then when you hear it, then you translate back and then you think again in your own language.

That's why it takes so long for you to actually speak something.

So if you force yourself to think English, then it much faster, and then you actually get practice all the time.

So I remember that forty minute bus ride.

I used to practice every day.

And ingest in your head, you're strying to speak talking to myself.

Yeah, so I think I still today people catch me talking to myself all the time, going crazy.

And your parents what triggered the move?

Did they sort of talk to you at the time about why they were doing that?

Yeah?

Sure, look at the time.

So my mother came to Australia as part of that whole relaxation of student visa posta Tiama Square and massacre.

And at the time, but in China, China was very poor.

Every person in China really wanted to see what it's like to be in a foreign country.

It's almost it's like a dream come true.

And my mother was very fortunate that she came through in the visa and then she managed to stay, worked many jobs and managed to stay.

And then I came and joined her six years later.

So we separated for six years and joined her six years later, and then my dad came another four years later.

My goodness, what a journey.

I know, it's incredible.

And the attitudes towards money when you were growing up, did your sort of parents sort of instilled in particular values.

Yeah, look, I think it just we grew up pretty poor, so making money is it's probably a big thing.

But even though we were poor, But my dad always remember he's I think he's quite a venturous.

He was, I would say, one of the earliest investors in share market or bomb market there in China.

This is I think he started in maybe like ninety nineteen ninety when the capital market was really literally its infancy in China, and it was more or less just punting, right.

So I remember at home, we don't have computers.

He will print out all these paper and draw all the lines of where the stock is today, and then draw all these ratio and everything, and then every day he'll make a prediction about the stock either going up or going down.

He'll never get it wrong.

And then every day he'll stick up a paper, so we literally have all these lines of paper because we don't have computer going across my bedroom, his bedroom, living room, all the way down downstairs, and they're into the kitchen, so we just have all these charts everywhere.

So I grew up with the charters.

Wow, investing you learned by Osmosis, Oh.

I reckon, it's exciting.

I think what I learned is that excitement.

To me, it's always investing bit like treasure hunting.

You go and find something before everyone else, and then you founder, you did the work, you found it, and you know you make the return.

So it's very much like treasure hunting.

So at the time, I feel a lot of my dad's excitement and disappointment, and then my at the time, I thought he would never be wrong because every day he's predict either or doubt Sideway will be the wrong day.

Was chat treasure hunting.

Can you remember your very first investment, what it might have been, and how old you were when you made your first, like your first investment all on your own?

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

So my first investment actually when I already started working, but very early days, I think I put my money in a company.

Actually, I put my money in a company where at the time I thought, oh, look, I don't really know how to invest.

I just want to invest in something that I know what it is, which is worth it, and because I go to the store.

In fact, I worked in Woolworth briefly as a checkout chick in high school, so you knew it.

Well.

Yeah, so it's like that touch and feel.

It's really exciting.

And I still have my name bad from Coles just quietly, Oh.

I think I do too.

Yeah, I think I do too.

And that was my first experience.

I didn't know anything about it, and that was at the time where I just started looking at some of the financial statements I learned in UNI, and then my first job as a signlest also working for morning staff as well.

So you studied finance to you knew you wanted to go into the finance industry become an analyst.

So you've got a bit of knowledge behind you then, but then you sort of think you still stick to what you know, so.

You'll buy I tell you what I think that it's actually less inspirational than often what I portrayed to be.

It's actually, look I always feel finance.

I did finance because as a Chinese kid will go finance or accounting definitely will find a job.

That's what my mother tells me.

And as I go through finance, and then I kind of learned the things that I like.

I never liked the accounting part of it.

I find a very try so.

And people who know me, they'll be having a giggle now because one of my stories is my dad wanted me to study accounting.

You'll get a job.

But then I was just delinquent, going, no, I don't want accounting.

No, yeah, I think the accounting is the thing.

Yeah, well, well I think I'm kind of pivoted as well.

So because with accounting I did a one year of accounting or was that not that's.

Not met the accounting.

Yeah, that's right, and they're too scared to drop the entire commerce.

Then my mother be hugely disappointed.

So I shifted to finance.

And then in finance that you learn about behavioral finance and economics and a few other things.

And behavioral finance was so fascinating because that's the soft skill, that's where you do the treasure hunting.

You're trying to think about how everyone else is thinking what are their biases?

It's almost like a psychology class.

I find that very fascinating.

Is that then how you can work out whether to go with the herd or not?

You know how there's that herd mentality in markets.

That's absolutely right.

I actually think unlike what many other people think.

Many people think investing about numbers and get the numbers right and everything.

I actually think get the numbers right is almost a basic and that's a small component of ultimate what the share price will do.

It's actually get your numbers right, and what the share price will do, especially in the immediate future, in the next three to six months.

Short term is all about sentiment.

Sentiment is behavioral bias, you know, is all about what would other people pay for those numbers that you just put together.

And that's what share market.

That's why these days you see while swings.

It's just that sentiment.

So it's actually incredibly important because if you can understand that and then you can sometimes go against the hurds, then you make a lot more return.

There's your treasure.

You found that before other people realized it was a treasure.

So is there something that you look towards to try and work out that behavioral piece, like is there.

I don't know if you're reading different aspects of how do you try and determine what people are going to do?

Yeah?

I think firstly you need to and when you start investing in something, don't start with a preconceived idea of what it should be, because I find many investors make this mistake is that they always feel, oh, I think this is that, and then they when you believe something firmly without open mind, then you start finding evidence just to support your own view, our own view sometimes right, sometimes right.

It's very important to when you start looking at something just keep a complete open mind looking at as afresh or some of the previous mistakes.

Many mistakes made mistake all the time, and one of some of the biggest mistake is that when we have preseconceived idea, then we start making pivot to the wrong side.

Then you stop listening to everyone and then you kind of just make the wrong bet about a company's future simply because you just couldn't see what is coming.

So yeah, so I think open mind and curiosity is very important.

Do you have any rules or structures around how you go to invest that you're talking about it sounds like you do an awful lot of research and you sort of sounds like you pause and really get to understand the company before you invest.

But how long does that take?

And is that sort of a metric or so some sort of plan that you work to before you actually invest your money or your client's money.

Oh absolutely, so look for a brand new company, it does take much longer because ultimately we always talk about do your homework, is that you do need to understand the business.

So the core understanding of the business is firstly, what's its customer proposition?

What's the proposition?

Why does it exist?

So ask this question why does it exist?

How does it exist?

How is it better than others?

And how does it make money?

And is that how or specialty going to continue?

Are they keep reinvesting what's special about that business that they can keep going?

And then you can decide, Okay, well it can make this much money and next share you'll make more.

Because I know all these things they're doing, it's going to drive this and I know the management execution is very important.

They've done it before and you met the management need.

They're driven because ultimately, especially small business, they run by people who's creating, innovating an idea, So they've got to be driven, so it's them.

You kind of follow them when it's early on.

So a lot of these Once you're done your homeworld, you understand, you really understand the driver of the business, where it's going, You understand the management, you understand in and out of that business and that industry.

And then this is the first part of it.

And then the next part of it is to actually work out what you want to pay for it, and that is the tricky part.

That is the tricky part.

When we come back, let's talk about how to know when a stock is too expensive?

And I also want to know your investing mistakes or do they teach you?

And what's your investing advice for everyday investors.

We'll return to our chat following this small break Jim Bay.

Before we went to the break, we were talking about investing in shares, so doing all of the research deciding which company you'd like to back.

The tricky part though, is working out whether there's value in that company.

How do you go about working out whether a company is too expensive to buy?

I think in today's world, the expensiveness really come back down to relative valuation, so you compare it with something else.

So we in the Australian market, if something is expensive, is not a reason for not buying something or for selling something, because yeah, I tell you why.

Because Australian market growth is very hard to come by, and then there's only limited there's only a couple of companies you can buy that can grow.

So there's an incredible amount of money keeps piling into growth within our share market and they will keep going to the same company.

So the evaluation today is much much higher than they were ten years ago.

Simply because it's just not as many companies, not many comports, that's right, And there's an awful lot of money that needs to be funneled.

Towards amount of money that's right.

Yeah, that's right.

And everyone wants to growth company to future proof their portfolio.

Right, So your portfolio will have always have bit of everything.

You have, bit of gold, bit of a company that paid dividend like banks and things give you good income, and then bit of maybe bit of material, but bit of a growth company because in five years time, you want your portfolio to keep growing rather than just paying out dividend.

Right, you don't want it to stand still every year.

They say share market should double every seven years.

So you want that growth company to be the core holding of a portfolio.

And they're on top of that, you've got some dividend, you got some cyclical they call a ciclical.

Cyclicals companies do well when the economy picks up and then do badly when economy So you buy and sell you much more shorter term with those ones.

So that's the portfolio.

So you think I need to have a bank in my portfolio.

We always refer to the Big four and then Commonwealth Bank has absolutely gone out on its own, like it is just on a different level.

So then how do you work out then, if I want to have a bank, does Commonwealth now look so expensive that I'm better off going with these other three pick one of them?

Or do you say, like what we were talking about before is like the herd's obviously going with CBA.

How do you make that decision?

How do you sit down and assess it?

Yeah, look a two things I agree with you.

I think banks looks really expensive.

Yeah yeah.

And then the thing is like you don't really want to as an investor who's not constantly watching the market.

I always have advice to stick with quality, stick with the best quality company, and because you don't want to worry about a day to day you've got to day trade and all of that, right, So unfortunately, I think CBA is best position.

It's the best bank, but most expensive in the world.

I can say that.

So when you pick one, I think NAB looks okay.

Relative Again, we're talking about relative valuation.

Things look relatively cheaper.

NAP still looks expensive for a bank on historical terms, but it's a whole lot cheaper than what CBA is offering.

So I think relatively I would hold NAB instead of CBA.

But nothing will stop CBA from keep rallying away because.

If anyone listening, if they just put CBA, it's you keep.

Up, because I tell you what, last three months at the share price going where it actually six six months ago, a share price was moving higher because of it's earning, was doing a bit better and buy back and all these great things.

But last three months all because international investor want to put money in Australia.

And then what do they do.

They kind of just buy the top companies and they don't want to buy resources, so they bought banks and then watch banks you buy, you buy the CBA.

They don't want the problem with it, and they've had a lot of issues and even Westpac is not doing gray, so they kind of just put money in the big one.

We get told a lot that, particularly when markets are volatile, don't sell, sit tight hanging there.

I think for investors too, there is an art in knowing when to sell.

How do you work out when is a great time to sell?

Yeah, so to sell is always the hardest question for it.

Yeah, so hardest question.

I always believe you find a proper growth winner, you do not sell right, so you can trim a little bit because you need money to buy something else.

That's how we look at it.

So if I some of our winner like like three sixty Promedicus and these were incredibly well.

But the thing is, if I find something else I think also can do very well in the next to a month, I might sell a little bit and put into it, but I don't completely sell out because winners history have proven that if you sell it, you'll never buy back in because they keep going.

So a company like that is they're just such a strong driver behind them in terms of earnings growth We just don't have many of them around.

So how do you go about balancing your portfolio?

Yeah, So the good thing is that when you find when we have the next opportunity coming out maybe so I think even with like three sixty it was a few years ago, was very cheap.

Everyone worried about what's happening with the US and all that, and then you know, you sell some of the growth names and funding too those and even early in the year when you talk about the market volatility, these times are great to picking up high quality companies because people sell everything.

Especially people like to sell winners because they go, oh, I don't know what tariff is going to do.

I'm going to sell my profit, my winners because I've done so well out of them.

So people sold out all the growth names.

They're all thirty percent cheaper, literally in three weeks thirty percent cheaper, and then they all jumped more than thirty percent.

Some of them have gone up thirty percent since the.

Behindslight's wonderful, isn't it.

So Yeah, that's why do you stay calm in those times.

It can be turbulent.

That's got a job where you'll wake up in the morning or maybe I don't know if you would have to go, what's my morning going to be?

Like, It's just it's what differences happening on global markets really does impact what's happening on the local market.

Absolutely, so I think, look, I've been doing this for twenty five years, so you kind of get used to the volatility.

Volatility will but you know it will always pass.

It will always pass, but you need to work out what's the new information.

So what we didn't know at the time was really in this particular time was tariff.

We don't know what Trump is going to do one hundred and forty seven percent on China or all that.

So for companies that potentially get impacted by that tariff, we just thought that's too hard because I don't know tomorrow.

It could be one hundred percent tomorrow or zero percent.

I don't know.

That's we don't do.

But for the company actually doesn't get impacted by tariff, they are thirty percent lower on no change to earnings.

This way we know it will come back.

So you buy these businesses.

Same as during a pandemic.

I remember when market went free four, same thing.

Everything fell, especially the winners.

They fell first and then we just sort of work out what we do know what we don't know.

So the first thing is that what we do know is that hard asset will come back Sydney Airport.

Someone will buy this thing it was forty percent cheap, or someone will buy it.

So you buy the hard air set and then we have the government promised to stepping give stimulus and all of that.

Then we'll go okay and then buy retailers by JB High Vibe.

So really need to really understand what information is there and then based on and see if there's any change to your investment assumptions of a company.

Let's dive into some of the mistakes along the way.

We've all made some safe places.

It's a safe space, that's right.

But I think to learn and to grow and to become a better investor, you've had to have made some clangers along the way.

So I don't know if there's one in particular that you recall what it was and.

What it taught you.

Yeah, look, we make a mistake all the time, that's what they say.

So investing in the share market, right, you work out your probability, so what they say, but we do better than that.

So we are probably is about seventy to twenty percent will outperform, and but that twenty percent time that we're underperforming will pick the company that didn't work out.

So you always make mispaedakes.

That's the key advice.

You have to make mistake to learn, otherwise you'll never learn.

So what there's one name always click with me because that's early days in my career.

Obviously feeling fantastic.

Buying Woolworth is oh easy.

And so that investment went well, we meant the beginning, So that that was your first investment.

Can you recall how much you's can't remember?

God, Yeah, I made money and then I sold it.

Yeah that's right, I made money.

I think I made a thousand dollars.

I was so excited and I sold it.

I was like, yes, lock it in, okay.

So then you feel like, yeah, I know what I'm doing.

Yeah, that's right.

It's way too easy.

And then that's when and then the I also just started my celside Joe where I was the first time young person be my full lead analysts and initiate on this company.

And I remember at the time JB High Fi just listed and it was expensive I think sixteen times earnings was very expensive then now will be like two hundred times.

But anyway, I was sixteen times earning, and then I thought, oh Jbhi Fi sixteen times earning.

Strathfield car Radio.

I don't know if you know that one.

Oh that's going back, yeah, yeah, okay, that's it.

So Strathfield Car Radio I was trading on twelve times and and.

So just wen't they They was a company and you could take out your car radio and your existing car and put in like the rats and city players and stuff.

That's right.

And then those days car radio is big thing.

So every people when they buy the car, they go and change their radio, they upgrade their radio.

So JB High Fi used to have those as well.

With the car radio.

It was a big credit, big component of that time, right, that's right.

Yeah, So you walk into Strathfield car Radio, they say they got car radio.

They got back then they just started selling mobile phone in those things, and they got a little bit of consumer electronics on the side as well.

So it's like a mini JB High five, but poor men version JB High.

Five Okay, And he thought, well it's cheaper.

I was as much cheaper.

Why not They're rolling our stores as well, and JB High five's rolling our stores.

Why would not buy this one?

It's all great?

But and then I put on a great strong buy and everything, and actually shape price did well for about three months.

And then Richard Utriz was running JB High five at the time.

He came over and saw me.

He's like, Jabab, have you been to the Strathfield store.

That's almost question to me.

He's like, have you actually been to the store?

I was like, no, I've seen pictures.

It looks fine.

He's like, you should go and have a look.

And was he there to chat to you about trying to invest in it?

You never sell one, Jock.

I didn't have sell but they just just essentially he's educating in the market, just listed yeah, doing a kind of road show and he's like, have you been to the store to obviously the pictures and everything.

And then I thought, oh, damn, I probably should go and see the store.

And I did go see the store, was saying, oh god, this is not like JB High Fi.

Majority of the store was designated to the car radio and then there's a couple of I think they have a big contract where the Optus or Telstra, they're like Telstra Optus love us, gave us all these big trailing revenue.

We sell one mobile phone, we'll get paid so much and all that, and then tiny bit income stream electronics completely different, very old school, very dated.

They're not in the shopping center, they're outside on those Paramatta roads and just very different vibe between the stores.

And then it's not efficient every category and JB HIGHI back then only just started selling a few category.

They haven't started selling game yet, they haven't started selling PC.

There were so many new categories to come, completely different, and I came back thinking this is not good.

But anyway, I wasn't experienced that.

I thought, look, I could write it.

Because you made your decision right, and so going to back yourself in every written it's great.

Yeah, and invested and I said it's great buy and then trying to convince everyone to buy.

And six months later retail condition got a bit tougher, so consumer become tightened their pockets and everything else.

Immediately, Strathfield they're like for like started going negative.

Can you what year are we talking?

Maybe it was two thousand and five.

There was one year many retailer had downgrades.

I think maybe it was May two thousand and five or two thousand and four.

Winter was too hot as well.

Everyone down graded because it was too hot.

Jackets won't selling.

A Just group was listed at the time as well, remember, but yeah, so just retailer when things got a little bit tougher.

Retailer don't have strong business model.

They just don't do it as well.

People don't need to go to Strathfield, whereas jbhigfire because they have a strong business models, but they pull people in.

People want to go and see what's going on or the excited excitement.

So things started going backwards and the minute star for retailers when things going backwards, going negative, it's heavily leveraged because they don't have much debt but the lease.

They have to pay a lot on the lease, so there's not much room to move for regiler.

Start to see it turn negative.

But you realize, as we spoke about earlier, it's like you've made a decision and you don't You don't sell out when things get volatile.

So did you stay?

Oh no, no, So I got this one wrong.

Yeah, because I realized how quickly things can get bad, and so the minute it turns negative.

I think I sat there for six months, longer than I should six months.

So when it started turning, I didn't move straight away because I thought it will get better.

Maybe just patch your consumer.

Maybe they just unlucky.

Management always find the best excuses.

Oh, this thing happened, too much rain or something.

Always this.

So at the end, so and they're six month later, I realized that the operating D leverage is very significant for a retailer.

And for a retailer, by then, I have realized that there is something that whatever I thought it was special about the company, it was not there.

I should have really visited the store, really see what was the value driver why people walk into that store.

There was no reason.

That's why when things are tough, people don't walk in.

Do you remember how much money you might have lost with that investment?

Oh I think I lost like twenty thirty percent of the investment.

Yeah, okay, all right, but it stuck with you all this time, and that mistake forever.

It's just to do the homework right.

It's about really truly understand the business instead of what management tell you.

Seeing as we're going down back to two thousand and five, maybe if you could go back sort of twenty years or so, if there was a financial habit that you could have picked up back then, do you know what that would have been, just layering a good.

Habit, financial habit.

I think it's probably back then I was at the early stage of I do think reading financial publication is very important.

Excellent, you can all read this and the Australia is the best.

Well, that's right, that's right.

I actually think it's really important.

And these days that's where we read about the mergers and acquisitions, the rumored deal that's coming through.

We'll get it from the paper.

And in those days, still early days, I scheme through every now and then, but then you miss things also.

You want as dead.

It catered to reading and making sure.

So if you could go back in time, you would actually just read more consistently.

Absolutely every single day like as information, and process the information much earlier in the day.

So how I process information these days?

All the reading everything is done before a thirty, So everything is done before a thirty, So all the and the a thirty we have our team meeting, we talk about what we have absorbed.

This includes everything what happened overnight, what happened to what happened in the US market, what sort of things that's change, Which company said well, which company had done great?

And what's this?

And they're also absorbing newsflow in Australian market before it opens, all the morning news, knowing what's going to change, and by a thirty we almost know how our market will open, which sector would do well, which company will go up and down, which announcement meant to earnings down, and all that.

So by a thirty everything's processed.

We'll return to our chat following this small breakthrough.

Is there a piece of advice for someone like me or someone listening about how they can is the one thing that they should be doing that can make them a better investor or at least start to build that wealth.

I feel like we're just all very busy, That's right.

What can people do?

You sort of juggling?

People are juggling a lot.

Oh absolutely, and it's a never ending I've got kids to myself, it's just constantly juggling.

So look, I think the advice is that for someone wants to really learn about investing, because I do all of these beforehand, because I'm a professional farm manager, I meant to know everything about what's happening in the market.

Then I can change my bed so I can be more active, I can respond to different things.

But you know, if you're an individual, you're buying peel to your own portfolio, you don't A lot of these things are noise.

As individual, you just want to want to grow your own wealth.

You may one year you do a bit worse than the share market, but it doesn't matter.

You pick the company that's still gone up.

So it's a very different dynamic.

But for individual it's really about I feel, it's about the find the company you really understand and its quality, so they get much less headache when you find a spivvy stock.

When you get a hot tip from somebody, usually hot tap are bad because somebody told you the hot tip would probably means that many other people already got that hot tip a long time ago, and then you might be the last person before it become not so hot.

And a lot of hot tip is fine, but it just means they've probably it's gone up a lot, gone very expensive.

One of the example is recently there's all these defense companies, Yeah, gone through the roof, that's right, trying to sign up and everything, and I would say a lot of them has a lot of hot air in it, so they're not really training on how much earning is multiple and the traditional things you're looking at they're training are it's hot.

We just got to get in because there's only a few of them.

So these companies when they it's just risky, right, you got to watch them because if suddenly one day people go, oh, you're maybe it's not spending as much or maybe actually a company didn't win quite that many contract because the ship the amount of shapper's gone out, people waiting for a lot of contract to come through.

So that's rich.

So I just think stayed with the company, especially you can touch and feel, you understand the product and in the quality larger blue tip.

It's just much much easier, less headache, you don't have to be on call suddenly something happens, share price down twenty Just invest is that the message just in state you have to get started.

Don't invest in ETF for ETF is his least lazy way of doing.

So ETFs are booming.

Yeah, there's now active ETF coming.

Actually we launching it active ETF as well, So that's with active manager ETF is fine, but you're not really learning.

So if you really want to learn about investing, when we talk about understanding company, you're doing all that homework.

That's big part of the treasure hunting, right, that's the fun part.

So that's when you if you pick a company, it forces you to learn about it.

So that's actually investing part.

But if you're put in the ETF, that's more grow wealth part.

So because if you want to just an easy way just okay, I just want to go with the share market, put in the ETF.

That's an easy way to do it as well.

So we're talking defense stocks, so I might not be able to pick the winner of who's going to get the content, but I would think my logic would say by the defense ETF, so you can spread the risk.

So the challenge with that is that you've got to be early, right because when the hot air comes out, the whole thing goes.

Yeah yeah, So it doesn't matter which one you're in, so it's just the whole thing goes.

So I always feel the thematic there is a lot of thematic ETF, but when you look at your own portfolio, you don't want to have a big part of it in it.

You have a small part.

It's almost like part little bit on this.

But my core portfolio are these things.

We know the core things because the other one can be very volatile.

Juinbe we are fast running out of time.

So I do want to put our fast five to you, five sort of rapid fire questions just to see how we go.

First up, morning or night.

When do you make your best financial decisions?

Morning morning?

Okay, before a thirty, before thirty, when you've done all the digesting.

Yeah, that's offee is fresh.

I'm assuming this coffee in the morning.

H lets of coffee?

Okay, power you through if you could invest in one thing for the next ten years, so you're only gonna forget about the actually forget about the I'm only allowing you to invest in one thing for the next ten years.

What would it be?

Yeah, you miss stock stock.

Yeah, maybe that's trying to be a little bit specific.

You get up.

I only I got plen of that, But I think I'm just going to give a very high quality one, which is Cochlear.

We know Cochlear, great company in Australia, a huge, huge amount of years of that strong execution globally not expensive relative to others.

Yeah, I think it's it's going to continue to grow.

Okay, is there any investment app you can't live without?

Investment app?

Bloomberg?

Okay, the terminal Bloomberg is a thing you can't live without.

Like if I took it away, you would actually have a difficult day.

Yeah, I think yeah, because Bloomberg is a professional one where we get all the life pricing and the like.

Here.

What's the one thing you want your kids to learn about money or to know about money?

Something you want them to really take away?

Oh okay, that's a really hard one.

So I want my kid I think the key thing I want my kids to start really understanding the value of money.

I think every probably doing that.

I want them to.

Actually, the key thing is I want them to understand how to grow money.

Actually already created lots of those savings to help them to understand you grow your money, the compounding effect of money.

And are they so?

How old are you kids?

Again?

Eleven?

Then fourteen?

Eleven and fourteen?

And do they have their own investments?

Are you letting them invest themselves or that?

Yeah, I've been telling them about so they do so, but obviously they always pick the easiest, the Tesla, the Apple and these ones.

So I'm trying to get them to whenever they see go to Woolworth and the like and then tell them the shares that's listed and everything else.

So that's how I get them, essentially, the things that they touch and feel every day.

The more the consumer goods product.

Hey, what's the one thing money can't buy?

Happiness?

And look, I think the one thing money come by.

I think lots of things money come by.

Even in investing, always feel it's actually I do it for I just think it's so much fun in doing so, because of that treasure hunting, that journey, the resilience, you get things wrong, resilience, come back and learn, then do it again.

So more than just money, it's actually for me, it's character building.

It's incredible experience.

A lot of people find investing quite intimidating.

So is there a piece of advice you have for people who look at the success that you've got and think, oh gosh, how do I replicate that?

Yeah?

Look, I think I just get started.

It's not intimidating at all, And it's not And remember you don't have to be accountant to do really well, but if you're countent, you'll still do it.

It's not just numbers.

It's actually so much more than that.

We talk about some of those thematic and things.

Every company is so interesting, and just have the curiosity and just get started.

I think people think they need a finance degree or some sort of education in this.

Is that sort of a big miss?

Do you think?

I think you don't need it.

But remember when you build a portfolio for the first time, you first you pick the blue chip, the larger company and diversify.

You need to have at least ten to fifteen stocks and don't just pick them out of one sector.

So if you pick a bank, and then you could pick a growth company, you pick a gold company, pick just a bit of everything, just so your portfolio is diversify.

It takes away a lot of risks when you do that.

JIMBEI thank you so much, Thank you, thank you so much for having me, Thanks for joining me.

I'm Julianne Sprague, Wealth editor at The Australian.

We'll have another bonus episode of the Money Puzzle next week.

We'll sit down with Roger Montgomery, a leading fund manager, a firm favorite at the Australian, a regular columnist.

He wasn't always a great investor, and so we'll go back and learn how he launched the trade, some of the mistakes he made, and his advice for us